11 comments:

Love the new racks, and the rail extension. The only detail that doesn't seem to fit is the flat stock holding up the rail. If you could come up with a way to use round supports, it would look quite slick.

.. however .. how is the lateral stability of the upper rail? I know the racks currently have the welded nuts on the side - this is good for attaching lights, etc. Would it make sense on future batches to add two welded nuts on the front of the rack? Then the upper rail could attach with one support on each side (the rear-most) and two in the front. I think this might be an improvement.

How useful with either rack be when one has two grocery bags to get home? Would that not be the most common load carried by a city bicycle?Perhaps you might consider designing a widget of some sort that would allow one to quickly and elegantly install and remove a wald basket. Or a large and expandable bag designed to sit securely on the rack. Most of the people who front load bicycles on a regular basis typically use baskets - for a good reason. A quantity of smaller items brought home from the grocery or hardware store tend to not do so well on a flat front rack. A lot of people who highly useful wald baskets that are poorly mounted to high on flimsy mounts. Others use a fancy flat rack, post photos of the bike carrying an large and unlikely front load on flickr and then use a back pack at the store. There is a middle ground here that isn't well served by existing designs.

Looks Great, I'm placing my order now! I'll definitely buy the optional rail, that's a great idea. I need a flat rack for carrying large packages to Fedex and my suitcase to the airport. For groceries, I'll use a cooler or cardboard box. In fact, my grocery store keeps empty boxes up front for people to use instead of bags. A q/r Wald basket attachment would be great.

Given the width of a porteur rack, a basket or bag on top that holds 2 paper grocery bags side by side would be good. If there's a secure attachment point at the handlebars or stem so the basket or bag doesn't tip over, you may not need the rails.

I had a very secure setup that carried one grocery bag up front & was attached well at the bars but only had a small bungee to keep the bag on the rack.

If you're serious about shopping by bike, the best is one big bag on the front and two back panniers. No matter how much you buy, distribute the weight around all three and the bike will handle reasonably well.

As schorsch mentioned, there might be a more harmonious solution than flat stock; however, once it is polished up it might look perfect. What does bother me, though, are the unfinished, sharp bottoms of the flat stock. Perhaps rounding the bottoms off into semicircles would look nicer? I also wonder what "truss-like" structures that start at two points on the rail and meet where the rach attachment points are on the rack, would look like. It might look ok, and it might be stronger, but then maybe it would look too modern - like restaurant shelving?

Hey, I really enjoy your store site and blog - it's a great relief to have your web presence, and you seem to have really come in and set a standard that was sorely missing.